Well, duh. Tell me something else I didn’t know. My sponsor had warned me about writing the piece, but I went ahead and did it anyway. You are only as sick as your secrets, I had heard, over and over in AA meetings, and I knew I could only be properly cleansed if I told my secrets.
I had this grandiose notion of helping people, that if I was honest there would be tons of women reading my story who would realize the mess they were in too, might be inspired to do something about it.
There were a few. But the notes thanking me, sharing their own stories, washed over my head while the criticisms and insults lodged their way into my heart. At least for a week or so. Since then, I’ve learned first of all not to reveal quite so much of myself in my articles, and secondly not to read the bloody comments.
“So how was school?” I ask, sliding gingersnaps onto a plate and watching her devour them as soon as the plate hits the table.
“Do you want an apple?” I slide the fruit bowl over, seeing her grimace. “You’re having dinner with your dad tonight, so don’t fill up now.”
“Oh, yeah. He texted me. He’s picking me up at four thirty. We’re going to Cara’s sister’s for dinner.” She rolls her eyes, and I am secretly glad, although pained as well, at how difficult this new girlfriend of her father’s is for her. And for me.
“How was school?” I change the subject, resisting the temptation to quiz her, as I sometimes do, about Cara, and her family, and the general all-round horribleness of her.
Annie shrugs. “Fine. But Lucy’s being a bitch again.”
“Oh God.” I do wonder if I should berate her for her language, but it’s not like I’m a paragon of virtue in that arena, so I let it slide. “What’s happened now?” Lucy is her best frenemy. They are either as thick as thieves, together all the time, or they hate each other. Lucy is one of the popular girls, so Annie has to vie with others for her attention. I see her open up in the sunshine glow of Lucy’s gaze, shrink with despondency when Lucy chooses to shine her glow elsewhere.
Not that my daughter is entirely innocent. I am quite sure Annie is not the easiest person to be friends with—she is demanding and all-consuming—but Lucy, girls like Lucy, have always scared me a little, and I would so love for Annie to find a different set of friends, girls who are a little less glamorous, a little less compelling, a little more ordinary and stable.
“I went to sit with her and Mary at lunch and they started whispering about me and giggling. I hate her.”
“I’m sorry, darling. Could you sit with Pippa instead? She’s a nice girl.”
Annie shrugs. “Pippa’s really boring. There’s no way I’m sitting with Pippa. She’s still obsessed with One Direction, which is just so yawn.”
Annie grimaces with disdain, and I think now is not the time to point out her bedroom wall is littered with posters of Harry Styles.
“Do you have homework?” Some days, Annie comes home filled with chatter, and I delight in listening to her, the two of us able to sit at the kitchen table for hours, but other days, like today, it is like squeezing blood from a stone.
“A bit,” she says.
“Why don’t you get it out? I’m going to start making dinner for tomorrow night.”
“What’s happening tomorrow night?”
“Sam’s coming over. He’s turned pescaterian, so I thought I’d do salmon.”
“Can you do risotto?” The only kind of fish my daughter will eat is the kind that is disguised by carbohydrate.
“Maybe,” I say. “Although I was thinking of doing something simple, then making ice cream for dessert.”
“He’ll definitely eat the ice cream,” Annie says, knowing full well that Sam is always on some kind of ridiculous diet, all of which goes out the window when it comes to dessert.
Sam has progressed from my gay best friend to my gay husband. He often commissions me, bless him, and since he and his long-term partner split up a couple of months before Jason and I did, he understands exactly what I have gone through. Although he is the one I invariably turn to for advice, I do believe we have become each other’s ports in the storm. The only thing he doesn’t quite get is the AA stuff. He drinks. Not excessively, unless it’s a celebration, but he doesn’t understand why I can’t have the occasional glass of champagne.
We have learned to agree to disagree. After I got sober, this time, I let go of a lot of people, the relationships I had that were based on drinking. I didn’t want to be around unhealthy people anymore. Sam isn’t exactly unhealthy, but if I didn’t love him so much, I might have reconsidered his constant urging to “go on, just a glass.” Luckily, I have been sober enough for long enough that it doesn’t bother me. I am never tempted these days, and quite happy to keep wine at home for when Sam comes over.
It helps that Annie completely adores him. The three of us have formed an unlikely family of choice. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Sam is always first on our list.
Annie looks at me. “What kind of ice cream will you make?”
“I thought maybe banana.”
Annie makes a face. “Or I could do coffee chocolate chip.” She grins—her favorite ice cream, and even though I know I shouldn’t, for she will doubtless finish the tub within the next day, even though I know I should be trying to encourage her to stay away from the devil that is sugar, she’s my daughter, and this makes her happy, and the guilt I have long carried over the years I was not the kind of mother I should have been, not the kind of mother anyone would have wanted, is enough to make me give her ice cream every day for the rest of her life, if that will make her happy.
Sixteen
I have now spent years trying to make people happy after that disastrous summer when I left Nantucket, left so much unhappiness in my wake.
I have now spent years trying to figure out how to make myself happy, how to come to terms with who I am.
Who am I?
I am an alcoholic.
Today, I am a grateful, recovering alcoholic, but it was not always the case.
My first foray into the world of recovery was in my early thirties, just after I met the man who would become my husband, against his better judgment, against, perhaps, everyone’s better judgment.
I slept with my long-lost sister’s boyfriend, although I have no recollection of it. My father, who I had only just found after twenty-nine years, kicked me to the curb. He did so kindly, and with tremendous regret. He did so even while admitting that he recognized himself in me, the drinking, the terrible behavior that I refused to see.
He had, he said, done enough damage to his own family with his drinking, and it wasn’t fair to continue to bring more destruction by letting me stay. Plus there was the small fact of my sister refusing to ever speak to me again. It was better, he said, if I left. And I did.
I came back to months of heavy drinking. Jason tried to get me sober, but it was much easier to drown my shame and sorrow in alcohol. We lost touch, although he would check in every few months, leave a message, send a text.
I lost my job when a new editor came on board, a new editor who didn’t look so kindly on the long, liquid lunches. Nor did he see the point of separate features and women’s desks. He consolidated, and two of us were left without a job. Everyone there felt terrible, and as a result loaded me up with freelance work. I made more money freelance than I had ever made on staff.
And then, for a while, I stopped drinking. I went to meetings. I took it seriously, and found Jason again, at a meeting, naturally. This time, because I was sober, had been sober for over a year, we found ourselves continuing what we had so nearly started first time around.
From being worthless and awful and depressing as hell, my life turned around. I woke up in the morning looking forward to the day. I woke up feeling alive, energetic, looking forward to whatever the day might bring instead of wanting to stay in bed with the covers over my head, tired, hungover, and dreading doing it all over again.
I had work, happiness, and a boyfriend! Not a hand
y shag or a drunken conquest, but an actual boyfriend who loved me and treated me well and understood me, for who better to understand an addict than another addict himself.
I was happy, peaceful, filled with hope. Jason’s recovery was so inspiring to me. We, as a couple, were so inspiring. We did, eventually, find our own meetings, separately, but that first meeting, in Paddington, was one we always went to together, and even though we didn’t sit together, and if you didn’t know we were together you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell, everyone knew. We were the couple that all the singles aspired to be.
We were happy. Happy enough that one weekend we drove up to Sissinghurst, to see the famous gardens, and in the white garden Jason sank to his knees and pulled a ring box out of his pocket, and my heart exploded with excitement and disbelief as he asked me to marry him.
We married at the town hall on Marylebone Road, and the room was packed, with my friends from the media, and old friends of us both, and tons and tons of people we knew from meetings.
For a while, life was better than I could ever have imagined. Settled, calm, peaceful. I worked my program, we both did, and I knew that I would never go back to drinking again. It actually amazed me, that I could go to a party where the first thing someone would do would be to offer me a glass of wine, and not only could I decline, I could continue a conversation with someone without thinking about that glass of wine, without hearing it whispering my name, over and over, until I had no choice but to give in.
It felt like a miracle, that for the first time in my life the drink wasn’t calling me. We even kept wine at home, for when friends came over. Not a lot, but a couple of bottles of red and white in the garage, just in case we needed it, which we rarely did.
I didn’t miss it. As long as I kept going to meetings, kept doing what I needed to do to keep sober, it seemed that alcohol wasn’t a part of my life anymore, and I was certain it wouldn’t ever be again. The pink cloud of sobriety.
Oh, how little I knew.
When Annie was born, life changed again. I remember, clearly, the night I thought it would be fine to have just one glass of wine. I could do it again, I thought. All these years of being fine meant that I was cured. Also, I hadn’t been going to meetings for a while. Jason still went, but I was so busy with Annie, and she had been such a colicky, difficult baby it was all-consuming.
I think she was four, and it had been a particularly bad day. She had thrown a massive tantrum in Wagamama, where I was meeting friends for lunch. It was the first grown-up lunch in a nice restaurant I had had in ages, and I was really excited, and Annie was going to be a big girl with one of the other girl’s daughters, Ruby, and it was all planned.
But Annie didn’t like the food. Or the restaurant. Or the people. Even though the last time Jason and I had taken her, on our way to buy her clothes in Selfridges as a treat, she had loved it. This time, she literally threw herself down on the floor and screamed at the top of her lungs. My friends pretended it was fine, that they had all been there, but I knew they hadn’t, and from the disapproving looks all around me, the tut-tutting and shaking of heads, I felt awash with the kind of shame I thought I had left behind a long time ago.
Annie didn’t calm down, and didn’t calm down on the bus home, and when I phoned Jason, in tears, he said I knew he’d be late home because he had some important meeting, and he was really sorry, but that maybe I should just put her to bed.
Well, I tried that, but she pounded on the door, screaming and screaming, and by the time she eventually went to sleep, I was at the end of my tether.
I went into the kitchen—we had a little house in West Hampstead by that time, the most beautiful little carriage house that had a big conservatory on the back which doubled as a sunny kitchen, and I sat in that sunny kitchen sipping my tea, as an image of a glass of wine crept into my head and I could not get it out.
I could taste it. I could feel it slipping down my throat, feel the sweet relief, the tension of the day slipping away. I tried everything to get that thought out of my head, but it was all I could think about.
When I say tried everything, I will confess I didn’t actually do the things you are supposed to do when you are a recovering alcoholic and the alcohol is calling you: I didn’t make a program call, or call my sponsor. I didn’t pick up the Big Book or a daily reader and let it open naturally, knowing it would inevitably fall open at the one story that would help me not drink. I didn’t do any one of the myriad things they tell you to do when you are a recovering alcoholic, and part of the reason why is that sitting at that kitchen table, able to smell and taste and feel the wine, I decided I was not a recovering alcoholic.
I decided that it was so long ago, my out-of-control drinking was entirely due to my unhappiness and my being single. And my God, it wasn’t like we weren’t all doing much the same thing. Of course I was drinking to excess, and of course I did unimaginably terrible things when drunk. Doesn’t everyone?
But look at me now! There I was, in my late thirties, happy, settled, with a wonderful husband and wonderful family. Everyone I knew drank, and no one I knew drank to excess. My friends would laughingly call it the witching hour, that time of day when looking after an unruly child, or unruly children, is all a bit much for us and a glass or two of wine is the perfect antidote to the stress of carrying all of this life, all this responsibility, on our shoulders.
How insane, I remember thinking, at that kitchen table, that I too should not be able to do that. How absurd that I have spent all these years thinking that I am somehow different, that I cannot do what all my friends do and have a glass of wine, or perhaps two, during the witching hour. And God knows, today of all days, I deserve a glass of wine.
I won’t have much, I remember thinking. In fact, I won’t even have two. I’ll just have one, because it’s been a hell of a day, and because I can, and because after all these years, I absolutely know that it won’t be a problem, that I am exactly the same as everybody else.
Seventeen
Jason came home that night, late, after his very important meeting, to find me passed out on the kitchen floor, empty bottles of wine, and yes, not bottle but bottles, on their sides beside me.
I would like to tell you I was so horrified by my behavior that I climbed straight back on the wagon the very next day, but that phrase I had often heard in meetings—that it is much easier to stay on the wagon than to climb back on—turned out to be a truism that colored my life from that day until the day Jason finally had enough and moved out.
That day was the start of a binge that lasted over a year. Then Jason and my mum staged an embarrassing and awful intervention, which included Poppy and Jackie and other people who had known me for years. I went to rehab, got sober, came home, and started drinking again. I couldn’t ever get sober in the way I had been before; it never seemed to want to stick.
I used to think of it like a light switch. The first time I got sober, I knew, I absolutely knew, that this was it: My drinking days were over. It was as if a switch had been flicked in my head. I loved how I felt when sober.
When I was drinking I always felt filled with shame, blaming everyone else for my problems, resenting everyone. I was this great ball of anger and resentment and shame, which disappeared when I got sober. I felt like I was, for the first time, filled with peace and acceptance and tremendous clarity. If a friend did something that pissed me off, instead of hating them, and cutting them off, and being consumed with rage whenever their name was mentioned, I found myself able to sit down and calmly say things like “I felt disregarded when you invited Poppy to that and not me.” People loved this new me. I loved this new me. Jason loved this new me.
After I lost my sobriety, every time I tried to get sober, I knew it was temporary because I could never get that switch to flick on again. I didn’t know how to do it. Our life was an emotional roller coaster, in and out of rehab, drinking, not drinking, pretending to not be drinking but actually drinking. It was secrets and l
ies, and I knew Jason was pulling away.
There was one night, yet another night I had determined not to drink. Jason was coming home at eight, and I’d planned to make dinner, to have a romantic dinner in the kitchen, with candles, after Annie had gone to bed.
I was making chicken stuffed with mushrooms and spinach, and halfway through the recipe I realized it was cooked in white wine.
I didn’t have any. I could have cooked it in stock, but the recipe called for white wine, so white wine it would be—if it wasn’t cooked in wine, it would be a disaster. And by the way, if you’re wondering why two recovering alcoholics would eat anything cooked in wine, the alcohol burns off if you bring it to a high simmer for one minute. At least that’s what I told myself that night.
I bundled Annie up in her stroller and walked to the supermarket up the road where I bought the cheapest bottle of white wine they had. I knew, as soon as I picked up the bottle, that I’d be drinking it. I toyed with the idea of not, especially as I’d had three weeks of not drinking under my belt, but I knew.
We got home and I poured a small amount into the chicken dish and the rest into a measuring jug. I told myself I would keep adding to the dish, but I picked up that jug like a large, cumbersome wineglass, and drank. And I kept drinking until it was gone.
When Jason came home, he took one look at me and knew. And by then he had almost had enough. Nothing, nothing terrified me more than Jason leaving me, which you would think would be enough for me to actually get my shit together and finally stop, but I couldn’t.
That night set me off. Yet again. The vicious cycle of weeks of not drinking, then falling off the wagon with a terrible bump.
I wanted to get sober more than anything in the world. I knew my marriage depended on it, but the pull was too strong. I just couldn’t do it.